Wonder Woman’s Gal Gadot Admits Her ‘Imagine’ Cover Was in Poor Taste

Gal Gadot admitted in a new interview that the celebrity-studded cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” she put together at the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic shutdown was a mistake.

“It just felt right, and I don’t take myself too seriously,” Gadot recently told InStyle about deciding to record the song in the first place. “And with the whole ‘Imagine’ controversy, it’s funny. I was calling Kristen [Wiig] and I was like, ‘Listen, I want to do this thing.'”

Fans of the Wonder Woman 1984 star may recall that Gadot released a video in March 2020 that featured her and Wiig, as well as several of their famous friends, singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” on social media. The clip quickly went viral and was branded by most critics as both tone-deaf and insensitive.

“The pandemic was in Europe and Israel before it came here [to the U.S.] in the same way. I was seeing where everything was headed,” the actor continued. “But [the video] was premature. It wasn’t the right timing, and it wasn’t the right thing. It was in poor taste.”

Gadot added that, while she and the others featured in the video had the purest of intentions, they ultimately missed the mark. She continued, “…Sometimes you don’t hit the bulls-eye, right? I felt like I wanted to take the air out of it, so that [event] was a delightful opportunity to do that.”

The actor’s most recent comments about the “Imagine” video build on similar sentiments she shared in October 2020, when she confessed that the clip didn’t go over as well as she had hoped it would. “Sometimes, you know, you try and do a good deed and it’s just not the right good deed,” she said at the time. “I had nothing but good intentions and it came from the best place, and I just wanted to send light and love to the world.” Gadot also revealed that her 1984 co-star Wiig helped recruit some of the biggest celebrities featured in the clip, noting, “But yeah, I started it, and I can only say that I meant to do something good and pure, and it didn’t transcend.”

Among the other celebrities who appeared in Gadot’s “Imagine” video were Amy Adams, Natalie Portman, Mark Ruffalo, Chris O’Dowd, Pedro Pascal, singer Sia and model Cara Delevingne. If you’d rather watch Gadot in Wonder Woman 1984 or Zack Snyder’s Justice League, you can catch both those films on HBO Max now.